Re: Libraries question

[Ian Peters <ipeters acm org>]

On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 12:47:27PM -0500, Bruce Z. Lysik wrote:
> Hi folks.  
> 
> Lately I've been having problems with some apps asking for shared
> object files like 'libglib-1.1.so.5'.
> 
> Shouldn't apps be asking for the symbolic link that's set up in that
> directory? Like: 'libglib.so'?  (Which in my lib directory points to
> libglib-1.1.so.13.0.2)

I could be very very wrong, so standard disclaimers apply.

I think that libtool generates the library names by binary
compatability, not by the package number.  So foo 1.1.1 - 1.1.5 might
all be binary compatible, so it can name them libfoo-1.1.so.1, and all
apps that look for this work.  But if foo 1.1.6 is _not_ binary
compatible with the earlier releases of foo, it names it
libfoo-1.1.so.2.  Then, an app which looks for libfoo-1.1.so.1 knows
it won't work with libfoo-1.1.so.2, because they're not binary
compatible.  If they just looked for libfoo.so, it might link with a
non-binary compatible libary.

This is just my current understanding, definitely not gospel or
anything.

-- 
Ian Peters		``Never attribute to malice what can be explained
ipeters@acm.org			by stupidity'' -- Hanlon's Razor